


GETAWAY-Being an Account of the Diamond of Ra Incident, as Related by Miss Charlotte Queensbury and Set Down by an Unknown Admirer in 188-

by sictransitgloriamundi



Category: Original Work
Genre: Boxing, Egypt, Gadgets, Steampunk, fabulous Strong Female Character, you go girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 14:26:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sictransitgloriamundi/pseuds/sictransitgloriamundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pyramids. Thieves. Treas-HOLY FUCK WHERE DID THAT AIRSHIP COME FROM HORSEBACK CHASE AND A DONNYBROOK i clearly don't know how to summary sorry</p>
            </blockquote>





	GETAWAY-Being an Account of the Diamond of Ra Incident, as Related by Miss Charlotte Queensbury and Set Down by an Unknown Admirer in 188-

     I wasn’t supposed to know anything about horses- I was only the entertainment. Yet here I was, England’s finest lady boxer, galloping for my life across the Egyptian desert after being most ungraciously thrown out of a dirigible, and with a fifteen-carat diamond slapping my ribs with every stride of the chestnut Arabian I was using to escape. She did clash frightfully with my peacock-blue silk blouse and my new dark leather waistcoat, but if wishes were horses…mine would certainly be a different color.  
      The man responsible for this shocking clash of colors and the instigator of this dreadful turmoil was to my left, galloping as furiously as I was on another chestnut that did not clash with his khakis. It was most unfair, really.  
      The entire thing was, when I thought it all over later.  
      Who had to go into the dark, clammy tomb of a long-dead pharaoh because Lord Roxbury’s well-developed shoulders were too wide?  
      Me.  
      Who had to root about in the sarcophagus for the Diamond of Ra, and whose invention, a most ingenious mechanical arm, got broken in the process?  
      Mine.  
      Who had knocked out three bandits to Roxbury’s two?  
      Me.  
      Who refused to climb the ladder to the bandits’ conveniently waiting airship outside the pyramid because he was afraid of heights?  
      Not me.  
      What was chasing us now because of Roxbury’s decision to abandon the fastest means of escape?  
      The heavily-armed airship, piloted by the lone, partly-mechanized hooligan who had thrown me off it as I was distracted trying to get Roxbury up the short ladder.  
      It was all too much, including the ridiculous fact that the brigand had tried to kill me with a four-foot fall. Fellow must not have had a ray-gun handy to properly dispatch me.  
      Roxbury chose to interrupt my reflections at this point with a rather brainless question: “Do you have the diamond?” he nearly screamed as he skittered into me out of the way of the first machine-gun round.  
      Blast. The horses were tiring, and the airship was catching up.  
      For one infinitesimal moment as I dodged another round of machine-gun fire I considered telling him that no, I had left it in the tomb, but he looked on the verge of hysterics and so I relented, screaming yes over the third or fourth round, I don’t remember which as our horses clawed their way up a particularly large sand dune.  
      I fired back an equally numskulled question: “Do you have a plan?”  
      “No!”  
      Delightful. But not unexpected from Roxbury. It barely mattered anyway- a half-remembered tactic tingled in the back of my mind, which could with any luck be implemented shortly.  
      Well. I certainly didn’t remember an oasis there, but we had come by a flatter way to the pyramid on our rented mechanical ostriches, which unfortunately were not equipped with periscopes.  
      Blazes! The rest of that manoeuvre still wasn’t coming to me. Roxbury would have to place his trust in my strong sense of self-preservation, which would hopefully keep at least me alive through whatever would happen next.  
      We’d nearly reached the oasis at this point, and I roared to Roxbury “DO WHAT I SAY WHEN I SAY IT IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!” Not one of my subtler moments, but his pale, frightened face nodded back at me.  
      The gunner had us nicely bracketed now, and the bullets were coming frightfully closer every round.  
      “STOP!” I screamed at the first palm tree, reining in the chestnut so quickly she practically sat down on her hocks. We hadn’t been very far ahead of the blimp, and now her long, silver belly shot past us at full throttle.  
      The reel of rope ladder was an easy target for the grappling hook on my belt, and I grabbed Roxbury’s belt tightly as the ladder uncoiled. I jumped onto the bottom rung so quickly he had no choice but to follow, and our combined weight triggered the recoil mechanism. It started with a horrible sound of gears grinding and had us above the feathery palm-tops in a trifle, out of the arc of fire this far amidships. Unfortunately, air pirates don’t maintain their ships as they used to, and the ladder stopped pulling us skyward at the half-way mark as the airship stopped directly above the sinkhole.  
      I surmised that the lone marauder, presumably having found a ray-gun, was coming to finish us off and half-pulled the quaking Roxbury up the rest of the ladder. The gearbox controlling the ladder was making nasty sounds, and as I helped Roxbury to his feet I wondered if it would ever work again.  
      A swarthy face appeared around the corner, and the simply enormous brigand whom I had previously met, now complete with obnoxiously long ray-gun stalked into the corridor.  
      Roxbury cowered behind my tall and practical but now-filthy riding boots as I stared at the titanic robber taking aim at us and swore in amazement. “By our Queen Victoria!” I think I said as I finally took in the full extent of his mechanized prostheses, which I had only a quick glimpse of earlier. The ugly chap had lost part of his head, both arms and a leg. Poor fellow didn’t look very bright, and I almost felt sorry for him when the ray-gun jammed in his hands. He looked surprised, and retained the expression after he lumbered a step toward us and all his prostheses froze.  
       Roxbury finally stirred behind me and said wonderingly “The legend of the curse is true!”  
      I spun in shock and nearly dealt him my nastiest roundhouse right there.  
      “What curse? Why didn’t you tell me?” I hissed. I fished the lump of compressed carbon out of my waistcoat and promptly popped it into Roxbury’s grasping hands.  
      “I am of the opinion it is a natural phenomenon rather than an actual curse, but the Diamond of Ra has been purported to corrupt all mechanized objects, which we have amply proven here,” and he gestured to the frozen bandit, his shattered ray-gun, and the ladder’s still- whining gearbox.  
      “WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED?” I said in a slightly louder, slightly more dangerous tone.  
      He apologetically replied, “It seemed irrelevant. I hired you in Cairo for a bodyguard and boxing partner, and felt that the relatively short duration of our journey would not have made it worth the bother to explain and back up my findings that the curse had no effect on un-mechanized humans with the appropriate documents, which I had left back in London. Therefore, I chose to simply leave the curse unmentioned.”  
      Fortunately for Roxbury, I caught movement flickering in the tail of my eye and whirled, slamming my fist into the brigand’s jaw in a reflexive uppercut as he toppled forward with a push from his good leg. My punch merely shifted his center of balance, and he clawed the Diamond of Ra out of my employer’s hand as he fell out of the airship into the oasis’ sinkhole below.  
      Roxbury jumped out of the airship- whether to rescue the diamond or the man I still cannot decide.  
      The airship mysteriously sprang back into full-throttle speed.  
      She pitched at my first step and flung me against a bulkhead, and I fought the ship for every inch all the way to the bridge, where she refused to respond to the helm. I supposed this to be some aftereffect of the diamond’s influence, and tried every trick in my book to right the dirigible. She reluctantly complied, but refused to slow or react to the wheel until we were five miles away. It was most unfortunate I couldn’t go back and see if Roxbury and the bandit were still alive, but a malfunctioning airship would be worse than useless in a rescue. They had the horses; they’d be able to get across the desert if they were careful.  
      If Roxbury’s still alive, I’m sure we’ll meet again. Airships and aeroplanes have made the world a smaller place- it’s inevitable. More to the point, he still owes me half a diamond.

**Author's Note:**

> Original footnote-type deal I had to write to get it published in my school's lit mag.  
> A Note Upon Historical Accuracy  
> This is a steampunk tale, wherein one pretends the Victorian era had access to much more technology than historically accurate. However, while machine-guns and dirigibles were uncommon in thus period, they were certainly extant. Unfortunately, mechanical prosthesis at that level of sophistication did not exist at that particular time, and mechanical ostriches have never existed. Lady boxers were also uncommon, if any did exist- the modern-day editor has been unable to find any proof of such an occupation at that time.


End file.
